Malibal Lotus P150HM - Startup Problem

I posted a while back on this forum about my dead 6990m. Well, the good news is that I was able to get the laptop from India to Canada and then did an RMA from there. Malibal replaced the card without any issues. It came back almost on the last day of the stay so there was no time to test it out completely. The laptop was powered on just once after in came back in Canada and everything seemed fine. The bad news is that testing it out completely would have been a good idea.

After the laptop came back to India, I tried to power it on and refused to do so. Most times when I pressed the power button, the BT light turned blue, then the top light turned blue (disk?) and then it just powered off. It might start once in maybe 10 times and will boot normally. I tried it without the battery, with the battery, with battery and external power. Malibal rep asked me drain out the power, reseat the RAM - the usual stuff. While reseating the RAM, I felt the CPU heat sink move a little. I pulled at it and it just came out into my hands without any effort. Though a little concerned about the paste job etc, I screwed it on tightly and lo and behold, my laptop turned on at the first attempt! I shut it down multiple times and each time it turned on at the first attempt. I thought the problem was resolved but it wasn't...

The next day I tried to power it on again and this time, the lights turned on like I have described before but the laptop didn't turn on. There was nothing on the screen. Only the BT light remained turned on indefinitely. I powered it off again and at the 3rd time of trying it turned on. But it has been getting progressively worse. Today I had to try 10-12 times before the laptop turned on.

Note that before tightening the heat sink the laptop powered off but now it won't power off but will be on but stuck. Nothing on the screen no signs of life except the Bluetooth light. Also, the laptop works fine after it powers on successfully. I have run some 3dmark benchmarks and the max temps were in the 85-87 range.

I want to explore all my options before trying get back to North America for an RMA.


Any thoughts on what is happening?

 

things can work losse through transit but the cpu pipe/heatsink coming off doesnt sound good.
now it has been removed it will need a new dollop of thermal paste and its not advisable to run it before that is applied as there is now no thermal contact so your temps will shoot up and can cause more damage. im guessing they could of repasted the cpu/gpu for you but not tightened the screws thoroughly.

your first step is getting a tube of thermal paste. cleaning and reaplying and then replacing.

 

Sounds a bit like electrostatic discharge - or ESD for short - damage. ESD can occur from the capacitive charge in your body and is drained into conductive components if you come into contact with them without being properly grounded. A small amount of ESD will sometimes not rear it's head until later, and the results could be small and intermittent, or immediate and catastrophic.